Now, last week on Level Up, we talked about an epic search engine optimization (SEO) strategy you can use to boost your search ranking and get more traffic! Today, I wanted to talk about three of the biggest mistakes I used to do (and see people do) when they start out with SEO + how to fix them. Let’s go….

Mistake #1: Keyword Stuffing

After realizing that you should include keywords into your blog title and posts, most people *cough me cough* tend to go overboard and try to include alllll the keywords, especially into their title. This is called keyword stuffing and it’s actually discouraged by search engines and can lower your SEO rank. A nice balance needs to be found so that you don’t add too many keywords to your title. Personally, my balance comes in the form of two rules:

make the title concise and relevant

use two to three thoughtful and relevant keywords or phrase, max

I know I’m being repetitive about it but, honestly, the way I help think of my blog titles and what keywords to use is to search for the topic on Pinterest and see what everyone else’s titles are. It really helps in focusing the direction I want to go in, and, as an added bonus, sees what people might not be writing about that I possibly could.

Mistake #2: Not Optimizing Your Images

When including any kind of graphics into your blog posts or web pages, you have a free opportunity to increase your SEO ranking, however, many don’t take it. The most common mistakes I see is that the file name – what is to the left of the ‘.png’ – is actually a bunch of random letters and numbers that have nothing to do with anything. Thus, if the image takes a long time to load, the reader will have no idea why an image titled “fda%ffdsajfa” is a part of your website, even if might actually be a really helpful infographic. Or, if the person decides to save your infographic or image, they’re going to have to personally come up with a title for it themselves. Plus, search engines use image names and alt-text descriptions to help identify and rank posts better. So, it is important to include the keyword/title in the image name and always add a descriptive alt text (which can just be the blog post title). Personally, my file name and alt text are always the same and, for the header of this post, they are “LEVEL UP – 3 SEO Mistakes and How To Fix Them”. Now, if I or one of my readers Pins this image to Pinterest, we know which post the image belongs to and how to properly link to it.

It’s easy to remember to link to other blogs and websites when the need arises but you shouldn’t stop there. If you have a relevant blog post – same author, type of discussion, idea, etc – make sure to link to it somewhere in your post! To be honest, the best thing I’ve ever added to my blog posts was adding “[Related: (insert blog title and linked post here)]” to my blog posts. Yes, I know that below all of my posts are three related posts that WordPress recommends, but most people might not scroll down that far to see them. Plus, there’s always a chance that there is a blog post that is more relevant than the ones WordPress’ algorithm proposes. So, depending on the length of the post, I typically add one or two of the “Related” links somewhere in my post, between two sub-sections. Lastly, by doing the linking yourself, you can backlink to old blog posts that people might not know about or have seen for a while but are still relevant!

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Aaaand that’s all for the major mistakes people make with SEO + how to fix them! Whooo! Congrats, we Leveled Up!! Now, what questions do you still have about SEO?? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll make sure to answer! Feel free to also share the post(s)!

And, if you have any questions now or at any point in the Level Up series or if there’s something you generally or specifically want me to talk about, feel free to comment below, tweet me @AvidReaderBlog, or email me at avidreaderofficial@gmail.com! Thanks, have a great day/night, and tata for now!